China Wants To Ban “Your Mum” From Its Internet

The Chinese government is keen to keep their cyberspace free from evil and all you with foul mouths. Through its Cyberspace Administration of China head, the Chinese said it targets to purge 25 words from their internet ranging from the Mandarin F-bomb to “your Mom,”. The chief highlighted this at a symposium attended by representatives of Chinese internet companies which included Tencent Holdings Ltd, Sina Corp among others with the message of a clean language online. The Chinese government is known for blocking sites that do not tow the line with services such as Google, YouTube, Facebook Instagram and Twitter all blocked.

The push for a clean web campaign was announced by the government during a cyber-security conference. This was followed by the banning of online account names deemed as unsound. The purge was also followed limiting political news sent via messaging apps besides ordering the deletion of thousands of posts on social networking sites. While policing the internet sounds like a difficult thing the representatives said could filter vulgar words and immediately delete posts including coarse language.

So why ban “Your Mum”? The mandarin version of the word is too coarse. Just last year, it was the most popular offensive word on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. According to a survey conducted by China Internet Network Information Center, the term was used a quarter of a billion times. China has an estimated 649 million Internet users.